Back in the heady days of 2016, a friend and I flew to Algeria because we could. Reading back on my travel diaries to understand why Algeria appealed, I wrote
Here’s the thing about Algeria: nobody really knows where it is. People are shocked to find it has a Mediterranean coast, that it’s less than three hours from London, that it exists at all. My mum thought I shouldn’t go, without quite knowing why. This is what led a friend and I to choose Algeria as our holiday destination of 2016 after we realised Iran is a dry country and, crucially, only lets Brits in if we go as part of a tour. Uzbekistan lost its charms when we couldn’t easily find more to do than whiz around the Tashkent metro eating plov, described in a guide book as “an oily dish”. Earning bonus points, too, was that Algeria has no current travel guide by anyone.
Algeria offered the novelty of boarding an aeroplane at Heathrow in the morning and having a late lunch in Africa in the afternoon. Looking back on those photos in 2021, the trip feels remarkably exotic and exciting so I wanted to pick out some of the favourite photos from the trip.
We spent the first day getting to know the city centre. There is a distinctly French colonial flavour to many of the buildings in the Bab el Oued district, and it is clear that a lot of care has gone into retaining the charm of the buildings. Alger la blanche is startlingly beautiful up close. Without guide books, our walk in the city centre took us wherever looked good and by chance we found the museum of modern art. It’s based in a stunning neo-moorish building, dating back to 1901, that photographs wonderfully.
The Casbah is part of the city that feels very different to the French part of the city and my friend and I went on a walking tour of the city which takes in some gorgeous buildings. There are attempts at bringing the Casbah back to life, but it’s a slow paced affair and many of the structures are in a parlous state, with bits of wooden scaffold propping up drooping walls. We walked from the middle of the Casbah down to the sea. On the way we were able to go up on a roof of building to see the city out beneath us. From the top it looked like a city of satellite dishes. Halfway through the tour we stopped by a cafe for a mint tea.
From Algiers, we took a teeny tiny plane out to Timimoun in the Saharan Desert. On board I could hear a bird squawking which didn’t help my ever-present worry that the plane will disassemble in the air. But the bird was in a cage, covered in a bin bag, and apparently this was totally normal. The bird experienced the novel concept of flying and I am sure it was most pleased. The flight from Algiers to Timimoun took us swiftly into the desert where I couldn’t stop looking at the never-ending emptiness and figuring out how I’d survive if we crashed into the sand. As time passed, I realised it would be impossible. But it looked incredible from the air.
On landing, our passports were whisked out of our hands at pace and then we sat about on different benches of the airport for a bit, looking outside at the Algerian flags fluttering in the wind and waiting for our passport to come back. Perhaps our UK passports merited close attention but it was at least 40 minutes before we had them back. The Police enquired as to how we’d get to our airport and spotting a taxi rank outside the airport, we said we’d call a cab. Ah, no. Due to fears of terrorism, the Algerian government had put in measures in place so that we’d need to be picked up at the airport by someone from our hotel and then accompanied there by a police vehicle. An escort, how exciting!!
Some time later, we arrived at the Gourara Hotel, where the strangeness of a Police escort was immediately replaced by a standard hotel check in and the view of the hotel pool, with families splashing about in it. The hotel faced a Palmeraie that stretched out until a sebkha (salt lake) and then dunes rising up miles away. I can’t recall being so shut off from the rest of the world, in the sense that though I had wifi, I was nearly 800 miles from Algiers and flights were irregular. It was quite an exciting feeling.
The next day we arranged for a guide to take us to the salt lake, and again, we needed an escort. We hung about outside a police station for a bit with our guide saying if they weren’t available, there would be no tour. However, soon we had some men with guns taking us out. The whole process was handled well. The police didn’t interfere with our tour and we saw some wonderful sights. We visited an abandoned village that is situated on top and under a hill. Under the ground, you could, even in April, notice the temperature change. I can only imagine how hellish it would be in the summer. The abandoned village was fascinating to walk through and it was a surprisingly complex set of structures that have survived.
Later on, we were driven around the dunes, which towered above us and looked magnificent. It was at this point that our police escort got stuck in the sand and our driver had to walk a fair distance to help them. We were surprisingly relaxed about this turn of events. But then, the two times I have been to a desert, I have found myself utterly content with the vast silence and emptiness of the landscape.
After our guide rescued out escort, we stopped by a tourist shop which had a reindeer for sale. I wonder if that was for tourists or something totally exotic for locals. Then we popped by a cave where I bought a scary looking fossil off some guys who were selling this stuff. I didn’t see any other visitors clamouring for them and wondered what they did all day.
I was delighted to see salad being grown in the desert, using little irrigation channels that our guide washed his face in. The sudden green of the delicate leaves against the orange of the sand transformed the landscape.
After the tour of the salt lake and the abandoned village, we decided to check out the town of Timimoun and get some money exchanged at a bank. It was a strange thing to need an escort for some things but not others. Nobody stopped us when we went into the town and at no point did we feel uncomfortable, though I certainly appreciated the effort the Algerian authorities went to in keeping us safe. The town itself is pretty small, with lots of interesting architecture and it looked even more mysterious and compelling with a glow in the sky from an oncoming dust storm.
Looking back at these photos reminds me why I love travelling so much. Getting to visit other countries and experience their sights and cultures is one of the most fulfilling things I can ever expect to do.
